Forever
by deweydelle
Summary: During a weekend at the beach, Harry wonders what forever looks like to his young daughter.


The spring had finally turned after weeks of unseasonable chilliness, and the weekend loomed humid and stifling. Staying in the country sounded unbearable, so he suggested to Ginny that they take Lily and go out to the beach for the weekend.

Convincing Ginny had been a challenge, as she did not believe Lily's behavior of late merited a holiday. One evening the previous week while Harry was kept late at the office, Ginny had been waylaid by a phone call from Lily's teacher, who inquired why Lily hadn't completed her any of her homework for the past three weeks.

Ginny, already late for an interview with the manager of the Tutshill Tornadoes, had been furious with her daughter; even after Lily offered a half-hearted apology, the tension had lingered. As summer loomed, Lily had grown restive and sulky, seldom joining them for meals and spending much of her time at her muggle friend Abigail's home, where Ginny was sure they were watching television (verboten in the Weasley-Potter and Granger-Weasley households).

As Ginny predicted, Lily had sighed morosely when Harry told her they would be going to Cornwall for the weekend to visit her aunt and uncle.

"Do I get my own room this time?" she asked.

"You'll be sharing with Louis," he told her, and engaged every muscle in his body not to laugh as she groaned theatrically, rolling her eyes and curling up into a ball, tumbling around in despair.

"Lily, sit up," he said to her.

Reluctantly, she tugged herself into a sitting position, hugging her knees to her chest and staring at him in pure misery.

"He's going to want to talk about his rock collection the whole time," she whined.

"They're magically significant geodes. And he's your cousin."

"He has a pet spider."

"Nephthys can stay out in the hall while you're there."

Lily shuddered with her entire body, an exaggerated wiggle as if she were being tickled by a giant feather. "Do _not_ call it that. It's _horrible_."

"Fear of the name increases fear of the thing itself," Harry said, no longer to keep himself from smiling.

She scowled. "I am _not_ afraid," she snapped. "I just hate sleeping on that bunk bed. He said he cleaned it off after that accident but it still smells weird."

After Victoire had moved out of the house and Dominique had started at Hogwarts, Louis had claimed the bunk bed the girls had shared, stripping the bottom bed of its mattress and using the space as a table for some of his experiments, one of which had involved frog spawn and did not play out as Louis had hypothesized.

"It's only your imagination, Lily. Your uncle cleaned up the room himself."

"I don't see why I can't have Dominique's room since she's still at Hogwarts," Lily muttered.

"Your mother and I are going to stay in Dominique's room. It's one weekend, Lily."

But one weekend for Lily was an eternity that Harry couldn't comprehend. Where Jamie was careless of time, and Al seemed only peripherally aware of its passing, Lily was so immersed in every moment that each passing day had immense, world-changing, possibly catastrophic significance; Ginny, who had once been an eleven year old girl, assured him this was normal, but Harry could not help but view his daughter's moody extremes with concern.

Everything had changed for her when Al had left for his first year at school nearly two years ago. Her delight at having her parents' attention all to herself for once had quickly given way to loneliness and anxiety. Lily had never had very many friends outside of the household, as the extensive Weasley network had provided all the playmates and babysitters she could ever need. With many of her cousins now at Hogwarts, she felt suddenly adrift.

She had begun to make friends with a few of the muggle children she attended school with - Abigail, Katie, and Tessa were the three names Harry heard most often - and although Ginny had not discouraged her, she confessed sadly to Harry that she wished she had.

"Lily still thinks everything is forever," she had told him one night, her bright head tucked into the space on his shoulder, under his chin, where it fit perfectly. "I don't want her to have to find out it's not. It's stupid. It's part of growing up. You make friends, you grow apart, you lose them; you learn from it. But I do want everything to last forever, for Lily. I want her to have all the time in the world."

Lily understood why she could not tell her friends where she was going to school, or talk about how anxious she was to get her wand, or ask them what House they thought she might be sorted into (her parents refused to share with her their thoughts on the matter, although they had told each other it was Gryffindor, for sure). But understanding could not help her come to terms with the growing realization that soon, the friends with whom she had shared classes, lunches, hairbrushes, secrets, perfumes, and sleepovers, would no longer be a part of her life.

Harry had managed to secure the Friday afternoon of their weekend off from work, and when he arrived home, he found Ginny harriedly laying out lunch and packing up the last of the bags, and Lily nowhere to be found.

He kissed Ginny in greeting and told her that he would take care of the rest of the packing. She kissed him back, told him she would join them at the beach around suppertime after her sports healing conference in Dublin, gathered her things and Disapparated.

He found Lily upstairs in her room, lying on her bed with her headphones in. She had her forearms crossed over her eyes, and did not stir when he came into the room, carrying their sandwiches on a tray.

"Room service," he said, gently.

She peeked an eye out.

"What is it?"

He lifted the top piece of bread. "Ham and cheese."

She wiggled her toes in her stockings, which Ginny also did when she was considering something. Harry resisted the urge to grab her feet and tickle, as he had often done with her mother. He could tell Lily was not in the mood.

But she sat up and took a sandwich, although she did not look at him and did not remove her headphones.

"I don't want to go to Cornwall," she told him, without preamble. "Abigail said I could stay with her for the weekend. I think I'd rather do that."

She took a bite of her sandwich and immediately dabbed her mouth with her napkin, a reflexive gesture Harry had always found amusing considering what a dainty eater she was.

"Why don't you want to go to Cornwall? I thought you were excited to go to the beach."

"It's boring," she sighed. "You and Uncle Bill talk about politics. Louis says loads of weird stuff about bugs. Mum gets all flustered at Aunt Fleur."

"That's not so boring. Remember last time, when Aunt Fleur pointed out some of Mum's grey hairs?"

Lily laughed. "She got _so_ red."

"And you have a new swimsuit. You haven't worn it yet, right?"

Within twenty minutes, they were stepping into the Floo to Bill and Fleur's.

Only Bill was there to greet them when they arrived - Fleur, he explained, was still at work. He grasped Harry's hand firmly, muttering something in his ear about the very fine bottle of scotch they would enjoy that evening after the children were put to bed.

"Ginny should have joined us by then, so we'll probably be enjoying the whole bottle."

Bill clapped him on the shoulder. "I love watching my little sister drink you under the table."

Like lightning, Lily had already changed into her bathing suit and was hovering impatiently at the French doors leading out to the back patio.

Bill raised his eyebrows at Harry. "We're being herded."

Watching Lily as she played with her cousin Louis in the shallow surf, he thought of all the things he could never have predicted about being a father, the emotions and circumstances that surprised and overwhelmed him every day. Of all that, though, the children were the most surprising thing.

On the surface, Lily may as well have been descended from the moon as from Harry and Ginny. She loved romance, unicorns, arts and crafts, gymnastics, and for everything to be perfect - Quidditch, adventure, mud, and Dungbombs were all guaranteed to elicit a wrinkled frown of disgust.

"She's a _girly-girl._ " Ginny said to him in wonder several years ago, as they watched Lily calmly soothing her baby doll. "How did we do this? I didn't mean to do it. Did you do it?"

"She's a girl," Harry had said, with a shrug. "She likes girly things."

Ginny shook her head. "You don't understand. I was raised with six brothers, and two of them were Fred and George. It was like living in the jungle. Playtime was really just learning survival skills."

They had dinner out on the beach, the hanging lanterns reflecting beams of light that broke and shifted on the water. Lily and Louis, exhausted from the long afternoon playing in the ocean, made it about halfway through dinner before Bill took them up to bed. He had just returned when Ginny arrived back from the conference.

"I'm ravenous," she said without preamble, kissing Harry on the cheek. "Kemp said there would be a spread at the conference. There was no spread. There was crudites. It was a crime."

As she spoke, Bill began plating her a bowl of pappardelle with salmon.

"You're my favorite brother," she told him, kissing him and then Fleur in turn.

As Ginny sat down and accepted the wine glass Harry held out, she asked after Lily.

"We just put her to bed," Harry said. "She and Louis wore themselves out this afternoon in the water."

Ginny frowned. "You had an eye on her the whole time? She's not a strong swimmer. She's fine at the pool, but the current - "

"She was fine," Harry assured her. "She was great."

"You are on vacation now!" Fleur scolded them. "No more worrying. No more conferences! More wine!" She topped off Harry's glass with the remainder of the bottle, and they all laughed.

The hangover the next day was not as bad as Harry had expected, and far less than he felt he deserved, given that he, Bill, and Ginny had polished off most of the bottle of scotch and another bottle of wine after dinner besides. Ginny was not in bed when he awoke but when he eventually made his way downstairs he found her, barefoot in a sleeveless linen dress, setting the table for breakfast. She waggled her eyebrows at him as he stepped, rumpled and squinting, into the dining room.

"Rough night?" she cooed unsympathetically, handing him a glass of water. "Breakfast is ready. Louis was a big help," she said in an undertone to him as he kissed her shoulder in thanks.

"Good morning, Uncle Harry," Louis called from the corner of the table.

Harry seated himself across from Louis. "Morning, Louis. I heard you I have you to thank for this," he added as he served himself a few slices of toast.

Louis beamed and began rapidly explaining the concept behind the Firebreather he had devised. It had an effect similar to a muggle laser, but used crushed salamander scales piped into a phoenix feather rather than radiation to project heat in a concentrated beam. It was too unstable to use for heating potions without a wand - Louis' original intention - but worked well in the kitchen, where the temperature demands were far less precise.

"Aunt Hermione said it was brilliant," Louis told him.

"It certainly is. And this is the best toast I've had," Harry said, wagging the half-eaten slice at him. He liked it slightly burnt, anyway.

"Don't let Bill hear you," Fleur called airily as she descended the staircase, fully dressed. "He would be devastated. He has been defending the kitchen for years, he thinks he is the only one allowed in it."

She planted a kiss on Louis' head and stole a few blueberries out of the bowl of fruit.

"I am so sorry I cannot be here for the day," she told Harry and Ginny. "I had promised Gabrielle I would take her shopping for maternity clothes. She said she could not face it alone. She is so sensitive! I hope I will be back by dinner."

Ginny made an impressive effort to resist rolling her eyes until Fleur had Apparated out with many air kisses. As Louis ran back up the stairs to don his swim trunks, she said to Harry, "We both remember how horrified she was that it took her three months to lose the ten pounds she gained after she was pregnant with Louis, right? You remember this?"

"It was a very difficult time for everyone," he said gravely. She chuckled.

After breakfast Harry changed into swim trunks and a t-shirt, glad to see the sun shining through the window, the breeze rushing in. Summer was nearly here - the boys would be home soon, full of energy and stories that would fill every inch of the long days ahead. The calendar hung in the kitchen had just flipped to June, the date when they would pick Al and Jamie up from King's Cross circling itself in bright red. The calendar caught his wife's eye each time she glanced at it, and then was unable to tear her eyes away.

He knew she was trying not to think about it too much. Ginny had never been comfortable with what she would have called "sentimentality," disgusted by the quality in others and embarrassed when it was revealed that it existed also in herself. She loved her children and told them so, often, but the knowledge of how that love bound and constricted her was too unsettling a prospect for her to consider for very long.

Neither of them spoke about the boys' return except in the most practical conversations - vacation logistics, planning for a camp Al had wanted to attend, work schedules and babysitters. There hung in the air some lingering fear that to speak their excitement and anticipation aloud might jinx something, and so it hung and buzzed between and around them, gathering energy with each passing day that ticked closer to the red circle on the calendar.

None of this, Harry knew, was easy for Lily. She missed her brothers too - even the pleasure of her parents' undivided attention for much of the year did not stave off the loneliness when one was accustomed to a bustling household - but it was more than that. As the youngest and as an unusually sensitive child she tended to assume the worries and cares of the household, whether that was tension between Al and James or Harry's stress from work, and so as much as Ginny and Harry tried to hide from her, she could not fail to see how much they missed Al and James, and to feel inadequate.

While Lily and Louis shrieked and splashed in the water, Bill, Ginny, and Harry settled into canvas chairs under expansive umbrellas. In spite of her promise to put work aside for the weekend, Ginny had a stack of letters that had arrived that morning containing updates on Quidditch signings for the upcoming season and predictions for that fall's World Cup, and her mobile continually pinged with texts from colleagues and blog updates with more news. Over beers, the three of them passed several enjoyable hours discussing the World Cup, the merits of various Quidditch players, and what certain trades could mean for the fortunes of various teams.

"If Strudwick's manager thinks his talents are better suited to the Tornadoes, they're welcome to him," Bill said. "The Cannons have traded for Inácio. There's no question in anyone else's mind who got the better deal."

Bill tilted the bottle back to his mouth and took a long drink. Even years later, Harry would remember the moment with impossible clarity - the sunlight glinting off the dark glass bottle, the sweat beginning to bread on Harry's brow, the wind gently lifting Ginny's long hair off her shoulders in tangles and whorls.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a hand reach up out of the waves, and before his mind had time to process it, his eyes sought Lily. She was standing in the shallows, shadow stretched out long across the shore, digging her toes into the wet sand.

He heard Ginny cry out. An instant later, Bill dove into the water, Ginny and Harry seconds behind.

The trance-like tunnel vision cleared and suddenly he was very present as he plunged into the chilly water, waves crashing against his ribs - they had not looked so forceful from the shore - heard Lily's screams of fear and confusion, Ginny shouting "Louis! Louis!"

There was a little body in Bill's arms but it could not be Louis, it was far too small, much too small. The little boy began to shake, then to cough, violently.

Bill carried Louis to the shore, pushing his fair hair away from his face. Louis was red-eyed and streaming from nose and mouth, gagging and coughing, his whole body trembling, but so was Harry's, so was Bill's.

He turned to find Lily and saw Ginny holding her a few feet away, his wife steady and calm. Her tight grip on Lily's shoulders and the shadow in her eyes when she looked up at Harry were the only signs that she, too, was haunted by what might have happened.

"Are you okay? Are you okay?" Bill asked over and over, and Louis nodded as the retching began to subside.

"I fell," he gasped. "I'm sorry."

"You can't swim out so far - I told you about the undertow - you have to be careful, Louis - "

Bill was shaking so badly that Harry knew the admonitions were purely reflex, some desperate way to assure himself that this would not happen again, to find some measure of control in a situation that had left him powerless.

Beside him, Harry saw Ginny smooth down Lily's tangled hair, which had come free from its braid while she played in the ocean.

"Let's all get inside and dry off," he suggested.

Bill carried Louis, who was exhausted and still weeping slightly, and Harry half -packed up the umbrella, chairs, snacks and games with a few quick waves of his wand. It was enough for now.

Inside they had a little hot cocoa and Lily and Louis, now revived and animated once more, went upstairs to play a make believe game, leaving the adults sitting in thick silence.

Ginny had started a fire out of habit and now they all stared into it, mesmerized, as if it were the first time any of them had seen one. There was no telling how long they remained like that - Ginny, sitting on the rug, twirling her glass of wine; Harry on the loveseat; Bill in the armchair, his face drawn.

"That was one of the worst moments of my life," he said at last. "Just thinking that it could've - it was nearly as terrible as -"

"What was, mon cher?"

Fleur emerged from the bedroom, greeting them all with a sunny smile.

"But what is the matter with everyone! This room, it feels like a funeral parlor! Too much sun for all of you, perhaps?"

Bill rose slowly and led Fleur out onto the patio to explain what had happened. Though they could not hear their conversation, through the glass doors Ginny watched Fleur's expressions and moods shift - first confusion, then horror, then anger.

"Don't," he told her.

Ginny shook her head. "I know. I'm sorry. I just can't stop thinking about it."

He ran a hand through his hair, exhaled deeply. "Me, either."

"You feel like they're invincible. Every wizard family has stories about kids falling out of windows, or losing their footing in the street when there's a car coming, or whatever, and being none the worse for wear. You take it for granted that their magic will come through and save them if anything happens."

"It usually does. Remember, when Jamie put his hand on the stove?"

Ginny shuddered. "I actually felt my heart stop beating. And then he looked up at me and said, 'Mummy, be careful, it's hot.'"

"We laughed about it with your mum, later. Your parents have a million of those stories."

They both looked up at the sound of the door opening; Fleur stepped inside, serene once more, Bill following, looking drained. He murmured something about dinner, but Ginny stood and waved him down, insisting that she would fix something. After a brief disagreement, Bill reluctantly agreed to lie down for an hour before supper.

As Fleur disappeared upstairs to check on Louis, Lily wandered down.

"Where is everyone?"

"Around," he replied, then, gesturing to the empty seat beside him, said, "Come sit with me."

Obediently Lily curled up next to him, tucking her legs up to her torso in a gesture so reminiscent of Ginny when she was a teenager that he ached.

"Can I see your phone?"

"I didn't bring it this weekend."

"Does Mum have hers?"

"What are you so anxious about?"

Lily gave a long sigh and let her head fall against the back of the loveseat, spilling red gold hair in a fine curtain over the white linen. "It's just so _quiet_ here."

Amused, he pointed out that they lived in the country.

She shook her head. "That's different. You can hear the neighbors, and the cars. Out here it's just the ocean. Just like, the waves. It's weird."

"Weird, how?"

She turned to look at him, her dark eyes serious. "I feel like we could be all alone here. In the whole world. And we would never know." She paused. "The ocean's kind of scary. It's so big. It goes on forever."

Harry could tell then that Lily had also been disturbed by what had happened today; that she had felt the same pull of fear and helplessness that even now he could not altogether shake.

"It's not forever. But it's very, very big."

"What's the difference?"

"What do you think?"

She studied her kneecaps. "I don't know. When I think about something that big, it's like - so much bigger than me. I can't swim over it. Jamie couldn't swim over it, or probably like even halfway, and he's a good swimmer." There was a pause while Lily examined the peeling pink paint on her fingernails. "When I was little I used to think I could see across the ocean, if I looked really hard. But Al told me those are just barrier islands."

"Is it scary? That the ocean is so big?"

Her small mouth curled in thought. "It's a little scary," she admitted. "I don't like to think about that, though. I just like to swim. I like collecting sea glass."

"Did you find any nice pieces today? Aunt Fleur will want to see."

She bounced up from the loveseat, filled with energy once more. "I'll show you! I found this shell, it's really cool - we have to show it to Aunt Luna next weekend, there's something really weird inside…" Her voice was lost as she dashed up the stairs.


End file.
